Hermann Max Pechstein Lot n° 49

Hermann Max Pechstein Blooming cornfield 1928 Oil on canvas. 53.3 x 63.5 cm. Framed. Signed and dated in black lower right 'HMPechstein 1928'. Signed, titled and addressed on the reverse 'Blühendes Korn/ HMPechstein/ Berlin W.62./ Kurfürstenstr. 126'. - In very good, fresh color condition. Soika 1928/12 (black and white illustration, location unknown). Provenance Private collection Baden-Württemberg; Math. Lempertz'sche Kunstversteigerung 491, Cologne, 8./9.12.1966, Lot 542; Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia The painting "Blühendes Kornfeld" belongs to a series of late landscape paintings that the Brücke painter Max Pechstein created in the 1920s during his summer stays in Pomerania. After he was no longer able to travel to his beloved Nidden for political reasons, he found a new and quiet environment, initially in Leba and later in Rowe on Lake Garder in the district of Stolp, which was not, as he wrote, "overrun by painters, tourists and bathers" (quoted in Soika 2011, p. 72). In the years from 1921 to about 1933, these pristine places became Pechstein's second home, inspiring him to create a variety of landscapes, seascapes, and paintings of people at their simple activities. When Pechstein planned to return to Rowe to paint in 1928, he invited his friend, the painter Alexander Gerbig, there and raved, "It's a very remote nest, but wonderful scenery and above all you can walk around as you please, quite uninhibited" (ibid., p. 79). That summer he also created two paintings of flowering cornfields. Pechstein must have placed his canvas directly in front of the field, because the tall stalks obscure the view and allow only a narrow strip of sky to be seen. With sure brushstrokes he sketched the lush green ears of grain, which blur towards the horizon into a sea of ripe blossoms.